


It's Done

by FlorentineQuill



Category: Maleficent (2014)
Genre: F/M, minor worldbuilding, movie moment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-05
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2018-03-05 12:43:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3120578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlorentineQuill/pseuds/FlorentineQuill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maleficent knows the moment Aurora's finger met that spindle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Done

Maleficent had grown up in her magic. She had grown up in the Moors, and could pinpoint all the local gatherings of magic. She could feel the thorn walls stretching across the borders of the Moors, to the edges of Stefan’s lands. Balthazar’s kin kept the rest of the borders safe, but it was her magic that kept the thorns intact, and responding to attacks.

Aurora’s curse? She would have found the girl no matter how Stefan had tried to hide her. Whatever magic the three idiot pixies had was meager, but distinct. Their wards alone would have been enough for her to locate where ever they had hidden themselves…if they had thought of that much. She had walked through their front door twice, and they had noticed nothing amiss. The only magic they had used had been on themselves. 

The past few months of being around Aurora had only strengthened her awareness of the curse, and how it curled around the girl. She had felt sick all day, feeling the curse start to tighten its grip on Aurora. While she had created, and laid the curse, it had taken on a life of its own in the last sixteen years, sinking into Aurora's bones. 

She had heard Diaval’s report of Stefan burning and breaking all the spinning wheels in his lands— With the way the curse had fought back, and thrown her off, she suspected that finding, or even making a spinning wheel, would be child’s play for the curse. And Aurora wouldn’t be able to fight it, compelled to follow, and fulfill her curse.

Her eyes were half-shut as she followed the currents of magic. Diaval pounded across the countryside, the boy’s horse kept docile as it followed her, tugged along by her magic. “Faster, Diaval, come on, faster!” she urged. Diaval snorted, and changed his stride, jostling her on his broad back. She grit her teeth, and tightened her grip in the thick, feathery strands of his mane. 

Between Diaval’s unflagging pace, and her magic supporting him and the boy’s horse, they were making good time. The sun was a fiery blur to her left, slowly setting in the summer air. The castle grew ever larger, and Maleficent swallowed back her fear— They had time, they would fix this. They would get Aurora out of the castle and then— Her thoughts stuttered. The fae in the Moors didn’t have spindles or spinning wheels but would that be enough? Even if they got Aurora out of the castle, there was no way short of flying to make it back to the Moors before the sun set. 

She huffed out a silent laugh: Diaval would love the thought of being something big enough to carry herself, and Aurora. Diaval stretched out his neck, straining up the latest hill. She tightened her grip on his barrel with her legs and shifted her weight up, towards his shoulders. He galloped over the top and— 

Maleficent’s awareness surged. She stretched out beyond her body to the castle. She shied back from all the iron in the palace, but the curse was more than enough to make her catapult herself forward. She caught flashes of Aurora, and her heart lurched in her chest. 

Aurora wandering the halls of the castle, her face slack, and eyes glowing with the curse. Aurora in a dungeon, her finger outstretched towards the shining spindle of a new spinning wheel that rippled with curse-magic. Aurora, pricking her finger, muscles going slack. Aurora, collapsing to the ground, magic dragging her consciousness down under, never to resurface.

Diaval reared under her, screaming denial, and she clung to him as she snapped back into herself. He slammed his front hooves into the ground, making her teeth rattle. The curse, ever present in the back of her mind and heart for the past sixteen years, settled into little more than a whisper. Its work was done, its victim entrapped. The magic needed to keep her asleep was nothing compared to what it had needed to force her down into the dungeons to prick her finger. 

Maleficent’s throat tightened, but she choked back tears. She leaned forward, resting her forehead against Diaval's crest. “It’s done,” she whispered. Underneath her, she felt Diaval shudder, skin twitching as if that would rid him of his unease. He snorted and tossed back his head. After seventeen years, she didn’t need him to be in his man-shape to hear him speak. 

_What do we do now?_

She sat up straight, and leaned her head back, taking a deep breath. Behind her, the boy’s horse snorted. It didn’t need the brains of, well, anything really, to be nervous. It was a horse, and not easy around magic. She glared at it, and at its passenger. The boy was still asleep, slumped over in the saddle, and held there with another thread of her magic. She bit back a vicious smile— Whenever he woke up, he would have some wonderful bruises from this rough and fast-paced ride. She patted Diaval’s shoulder. “We’re still going to the castle. We’re going to find her and fix this.”

Diaval snorted, and pawed at the ground. His sides heaved in and out under her legs once before he leaped forward, speeding up into a gallop. Maleficent hunched over his neck, fingers threading in his mane again. _We’re coming, beastie_ , she promised. _We’re coming to save you._

 


End file.
